I recently had to cut off a friend and I don’t know whether I was too harsh as many of our mutual friends are quite surprised.
This person has been a friend of mine for over a decade and we were bridesmaids at each others weddings - so pretty close! We would usually see each other about once a month and maybe talk once or twice between that but last year she started being really intense and constantly contacting me and felt as though she was trying to control me.
This started from me saying I was going to a dance class at a girls brunch, to which she said she couldn’t think of anything worse. She then proceeded to message at a later date saying she wanted to go and booked on. Alongside coming to this dance class, she was quite rude to the other people there and started messaging me nearly every day. This was also often on up to 5 different chats, plus she was posting about it on instagram and tagging me even though I had said I didn’t want to put to online.
I found all of this a bit much so I turned off the read receipts on my WhatsApp, which she had talked about using to track other people before. When I did this she started to only message me in group chats, which show read receipts no matter what. She also started to post really similar content to anything I would post online. She came up as a suggestion on an old food blog I had made and only ever posted twice on, which given the amount of contact we’d be having I didn’t think anything of. The next time I saw her after this she said nothing of having seen mine but came out and said that she had created a food blog and she was going to use it to review restaurants (the exact premise of mine).
It got to a point where I tried to create distance from her and became a bit flaky on plans. She eventually got bored of dance and stopped coming but then started to go back in the depths of my instagram and post things that were similar to old posts I had done as well as copying anything new. It got to a point that I muted her on instagram. When I did this I had friend requests come in from some of her distant relatives. Any time I did see her (we have a lot of mutual friends so have had to be at some birthdays etc. together) she would make nasty comments about me, she would have a very icy tone and then any time that I was having conversation with others she would talk over me. She’d also say the exact same things as me so if we were discussing that my husband had been on a work trip she would interrupt me to talk about her husband was due to go on one etc. before I had a chance to finish my sentence.
Even though she had stopped coming to the dance class, she was still in the group chat for it. They wanted to organise a Christmas do for the class and put a message on there to say could you react with an emoji if you are interested and they’d make a group for those people. I thought nothing of voting on this as I had been going every week, without her. When the next class after I had voted came up, she messaged (in a group chat) to ask if I was going to dance and that she was going to go back. At this class she was so rude to me and others that she actually came and stood physically in-between me and a girl that I was talking to and just drank her water really slowly… blocking us from talking to each other!!
After this she also messaged me to ask if I was going to the xmas do (she clearly knew that I was, I don’t believe that she came back to that class for any other reason than seeing my vote on a group chat!) and I said that I was paying the deposit but I might not be able to go due to a potential clash with my work one. Even though I said I might not go and she hadn’t been to this class in 6 months and had only ever been rude to me and the other girls there, she booked on. She didn’t talk to me about, she just messaged in the group a few days later to say she had paid her deposit. I saw her at friends birthday again a few weeks after this and she never mentioned anything about it.
I tried my very best to avoid seeing her from this point as I was finding it beyond awkward. When it came to paying the rest of the fee she eventually messaged the group to say that she wasn’t going to make it. Again she said nothing to me about it. Then at a Christmas do with our mutual friends, which was a few days after the dance social had happened she brought all of it up. She started asking how it was, she said she’d seen that I’d been going to the heels class and that she was going to go to the social but she didn’t feel well because she’d recently found out that she was pregnant. It all just very much felt like a trap of her never mentioning it to me but waiting to bring it up in a room full of all of our peers, where I’m obviously not going to start a fight about it, particularly given that she announced being pregnant.
This was the point at which I had had enough and I messaged her to say that I didn’t want any contact with her going forward. Her response was ‘have a nice life’ and then she unfollowed me on instagram. She also proceeded to message my husband on instagram - which he has refused to read as he doesn’t use instagram and is friends with this girls husband. To me it doesn’t matter what she has said in that message - even if it was nice and asking after me - you don’t message my husband, you say it to me!? I also doubt that it was nice, I’m sure it will have been something catty, as that seems to be her way.
I find all of this behaviour unbelievable, personally, but it has all been so covert and through online action or messaging that I think it feels completely invisible to others. Am I being ridiculous to have cut her off or is this normal friendship?! She is now saying to our mutual friends that she was completely shocked that I cut her off and has no idea why I would. She also said that if they ever have a problem with her they should say something. This girl is 35 years old - I don’t believe that it is my job to teach her that these behaviours are crossing a line… or am I being unreasonable?!!!